And surprisingly, Marta suddenly laughed-a wobbly and half tearful laugh. "You are so very right," she said. "It has been-what’s the phrase-one damned thing after another."
Galeano was so relieved he laughed too, uproariously.
"You’d better tell me all about it. Maybe I’d understand better. You know, what you need right now is a good stiff drink. It won’t do your cold any harm, either."
"Yes, I have caught a cold. There is a bottle of brandy, I was going to mix it with some lemon-"
"The hell with the lemon." Galeano went out to the kitchen, found the brandy, poured her a stiff four fingers and gave himself a smaller one. "You get outside that, and if you talk some you’ll feel better yet."
She drank a third of it at once, took a long breath, shuddered and sat back, closing her eyes. "I am," she said dreamily, "very tired. I think you are a kind person. You see, I cannot help but feel it was all my fault-all my fault." She drank more brandy. Between that and the sudden flood of expended emotion all her reticences were down, overrun. "Because I never should have married him. I never loved him as a wife should. It was wrong. We learn too late."
"Why did you?" asked Galeano.
She looked at the brandy, her dark eyes brooding.
"My father-he owned a small manufacturing business in Lingen, our home. It was prosperous, we had thought there was money-there was always money, we were not very rich but my sister and I were not raised to work at jobs, at the convent you don’t learn shorthand, typing. Then Papa died, and it seemed there had been speculation, he left my mother nothing. Oh, the building was worth something, the land-that is all. I had to find work-Elisa was too young then." She finished the brandy. "There was an American unit stationed near, the girls go out with them, and a girl I knew introduced me to Edwin. He asked me to marry him. I did not love him, I liked him well enough is all. My mother said it is the best chance I will ever have, in America there is always opportunity and he is a good honest man. She is very old-fashioned," said Marta, smiling a little, "and she said love is not everything in marriage. I saw all that for myself-and so I married him."
"And it didn’t work out?" asked Galeano.
She gave a short laugh. "Oh! Yes, it worked out, as you say-the way such marriages do! He was not an educated man, but he was good and kind-he was clever with his hands, and a hard worker, he might have made much of himself, gone places as they say. After I had the baby, I felt reconciled- meine kleine Katzchen. But she died-so soon, she died. The doctor said, a thing wrong in her heart, she would never have lived long, but- And then Edwin was hurt in the accident, and those doctors said he would always be so, an invalid, helpless, in the wheelchair. It was like a nightmare beginning, and it does not end. There was no money, no compensation for him-I do not understand all that, but we had a lawyer-that cost a great deal of money too, I still owe the lawyer money, and it all came to nothing. He needed a great deal of care. It was then I began to think, all my fault, for I should not have married him, feeling no love for him. I try to be a good Catholic, I knew my duty, to look after him as a wife should. He was of no faith, we were not married in the Church, but one takes vows nevertheless. But it was hard. Oh, for him too! I realize-but it was difficult."
"And then-what did happen that day?" asked Galeano. "Three weeks ago tomorrow?"
She opened her eyes and put one hand to her temple, slowly. "Mother of God, have I not asked myself?" she said quietly. "We had come here, because the rent is much cheaper and I can walk to work. In that way, it was better, but not all ways. He had been very despairing, ever since the baby died, and he had said to me many times, he would be better dead, such a burden on me and no good to anyone. I had been afraid he would kill himself. It would not be a sin to him perhaps, but to me-I had come home, several times since we are here, to find him drunk. That terrible old man upstairs-he would come, pretending sympathy, and bring him whiskey. I tried to talk to him, ask him not to do so, but it was no use-no use. And then-there was that day." She was silent, and unobtrusively Galeano tipped the rest of his drink into her glass. She finished it absently. "It was such a very usual day to begin with. I left for the restaurant. I had got him dressed and into his chair, given him breakfast. The woman across the hall was leaving also. And then, when I was at work, I remembered my letter. The last evening I had written a letter to my sister Elisa, I meant to take it to post, and I had forgotten it. I was going shopping, to buy her a birthday present, but I wanted to post the letter."
"So you came home to get it," said Galeano, and let out his breath in a long sigh.
"Yes. I was in a great hurry-it has been easy to blame myself for that too-I had to catch the bus up to town, there would not be much time to look in the shops before they closed, and I must be home to get dinner for Edwin before I went back to the restaurant. I did not even look to see where Edwin was-when he was not in the living room I thought perhaps he was lying down, he could get to the bed from the chair-and I did not even look. I took up my letter from the table there, put it in an envelope and left again, for the bus. And I went to the post office-we cannot afford the air mail, it is expensive enough to send by sea-and when I had shopped for the present I came home. And I told you how it was. He was gone. His chair was here, and he was gone."
"You remember if the wheelchair was in the living room when you came home the first time? But you’d have noticed that-"
"It was not. His coat is gone also," said Marta. "I think I have had too much brandy."
"His coat. Regular topcoat-raincoat?"
"A good thick wool coat, brown. He bought it in the east before we came here. And there is another queer thing. I am talking too much to you, but it does not matter."
She laughed a little drearily. "What thought did I ever have for money, until Papa died! But now, it is always to think of money. So always, I have a little, what I can save, hidden away for the emergency. I had not looked at it, since Edwin was gone, until last week. And it is gone too."
"I’ll be damned," said Galeano. "How much?"
"Two hundred and eighteen dollars," she said, shutting her eyes again.
"Where was it?"
"In one of the kitchen jars-canisters, the one for sugar."
"Be damned," said Galeano. "Did he know it was there?"
"Of course. He was my husband."
"Well-" Galeano looked at her. "You do feel better, don’t you? Do you good to get all that out of your system. I’m sorry I swore at you."
"But I called you names too." She smiled a little.
"And after you said you believed me, too. I think you’ve been kind. But right at this moment, nothing seems to matter to me so very much."
"Never mind," said Galeano. "Part of that’s the brandy and part the cold, I expect. Things will matter again. And I’d better go-I’ve got a job too. You take care of yourself, is all. Listen, things are going to get better."
"Do you think so? I wonder."
"They’ve got to," said Galeano stoutly. "You just take care now."
And he was of two minds, as he got into his car downstairs, whether to pass all that on to Mendoza.
Palliser had been the first man in that Thursday morning and Sergeant Lake gave him the message relayed up from the desk last night about the assault-with-intent lodged in jail. "Something else," said Palliser. But it had to be followed up, so he went out again and over to the Alameda jail. The suspect had refused to give a name and was booked as John Doe. When one of the trusties brought him to an interrogation room, Palliser said, "Sit down. Have you decided to tell us who you are?".
The man sat down opposite him and said reluctantly, "Steve Smith."